Effect of charcoal addition on mambong pottery properties

There are many types of pottery in Malaysia, some of them are Mambong, Labu Sayong and Terenang. This research examines the development manufacturing process of Mambong pottery. Mambong pottery was made by traditional technique. The aim of this study was to investigate the physical and mechanical properties of Mambong pottery due to effects of charcoal addition. Slip casting method was used in this research. In this research, the particle size of Mambong clay was controlled to below 250 µm while particle size of charcoal used was below 425 µm. The raw materials were characterized their element and phase composition by using XRF and XRD, respectively. The clay, charcoal were mixed with water at different composition which labelled as AO, A5, and Al 0 for 0%, 5% and 10% charcoal content. The percentage of water used for the three composition were the same which was 40%. The samples were sintered at 1000 °C in 8 hours and soaked for 30 minutes. Their morphology characteristic were carried out by using SEM. The effects of charcoal addition on compressive strength, firing shrinkage, water absorption, density, porosity and bending of samples were determined. After firing, the addition of charcoal tends to reduce density, MOR and compressive strength, meanwhile water absorption porosity, and firing shrinkage increases with higher charcoal addition. For the conclusion, the results revealed that charcoal could be used as a pore former in clay body and also used in the manufacturing of lightweight pottery. However, more research and study about Mambong pottery should be done to obtain the optimum parameters in high quality of pottery.